I Switched Phones. Where Did Those Text Messages Go?

The Haggler does not often engage in end-zone victory dances, though this has nothing to do with modesty or restraint. It’s because the Haggler is rarely triumphant in a way that would justify a jig.

But on Nov. 21, the Federal Trade Commission announced a settlement with Wise Media, an Atlanta company featured in two 2012 Haggler columns about cellphone cramming (the practice of adding unwanted monthly charges to your cellphone bill). Wise Media was charging $9.99 a month for services like HoroscopeGenie, without the knowledge or permission of consumers, the F.T.C. said in its news release.

Uncool, Wise Media.

The commission signed an $11 million settlement with the company and demanded all of the assets of its chief executive, Brian M. Buckley, because apparently neither he nor the company has $11 million.

To be clear, the Haggler has no idea whether his columns had anything to do with this enforcement action, and he has no intention of finding out, for reasons related to his fragile ego. But the real breakthrough on the cramming front happened not in Washington, but in Vermont, where the attorney general, on the same day the Wise Media news went public, announced that Sprint, T-Mobile and AT&T had agreed to crack down on unauthorized, third-party cellphone charges.

A couple of months ago, the Haggler retired his iPhone 4S for a phone that runs on the Android operating system. Soon, he noticed something odd: texts sent from iPhones of friends and relatives vanished into the ether. It was as if, after abandoning the world of Apple, he was now suffering retaliation from it. People with iPhones suddenly assumed that the Haggler was ignoring them, which angered them and led them to judge the Haggler.

When the Haggler texted his sister to ask if he could bring anything to Thanksgiving, she replied with “Chocolate treats?!” Hearing nothing, she followed with the classic “Hello??!!” Then the ever-effective “You too busy to respond???”

The Haggler knows what you are thinking: “The Haggler has a sister? He isn’t a caped, anonymous crusader who faked his own death years ago and lives a solitary, grumpy life as a consumer avenger?” No. He has a sister, and other relatives and acquaintances, and there is no telling how many were miffed by his text silence in the weeks after he quit his iPhone.

Before we test that theory, let’s explain the problem. When you send an iMessage from an iPhone, you are using an Apple technology that allows you to send texts free to other iPhone users. But an iMessage is not a standard SMS text used by other operating systems. So if you swap your iPhone for, say, an Android device, the iMessages that people with iPhones send you will land in your discarded iPhone — until you tell that discarded iPhone to quit taking messages.

And that’s harder than it sounds. Apple phone reps have provided different solutions to different callers. The most common is “turn iMessage off on your iPhone.” Great. But the Haggler had done that soon after booting up his new phone. Other solutions involve changing your Apple ID and password. Done and done, and the problem persisted. Still others say it may take 30 days to flush the iPhone out of Apple’s corporate brain cloud, a phrase the Haggler invented and hopes will catch on.

But the Haggler’s problem endured well past the 30-day mark.

If you’re in this position, here is some advice: Don’t ask Apple’s corporate P.R. team for help. The people there are so terse you have to assume their keyboards have been heated to 128 degrees Fahrenheit and therefore they can’t type much.

When the Haggler inquired about the iMessage problem, he received a link from a spokeswoman that explained the “Turn off iMessage on your iPhone” strategy. The Haggler also asked if Apple wanted to make switching as difficult as possible. “I will decline to comment further. Thanks,” typed the spokeswoman, Trudy Muller.

The solution that worked for the Haggler came in a visit to an Apple store in SoHo. The Haggler had to wait an hour past his appointment time, suggesting that the Genius Bar is way understaffed. But the employees are as helpful as the corporate spokes-team is curt. One of those employees, Harry Bellenie, noted that the Haggler’s iPhone still had the word Verizon on the upper-left corner, suggesting that the device remained connected to the carrier. How or why was unclear, but after Mr. Bellenie “restored” the iPhone — which wiped it so clean that it behaved as if it had just come out of the box — the Verizon link was gone.

Later, the Haggler received a text from his sister on his new phone. So far, the flow of texts seems to have resumed.

“Apple doesn’t do a good enough job educating people about this,” said Rene Ritchie of iMore.com, a website of all things Apple. “My mother doesn’t know the difference between iMessage and SMS text, and she shouldn’t need to.”

Maybe it’s asking too much of a company to highlight the right way to switch to a rival’s products. Then again, all this iMessage anger may reduce the odds that a customer will switch back.

EMAIL: haggler@nytimes.com. Keep it brief and family-friendly, include your hometown and go easy on the caps-lock key. Letters may be edited for clarity and length.

A version of this article appears in print on December 8, 2013, on Page BU3 of the New York edition with the headline: Hey, Sis, I’m Really Not Ignoring You. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe